Instructions

ZOOM IN by clicking on the page. A slider will appear, allowing you to adjust your zoom level. Return to the original size by clicking on the page again.

MOVE the page around when zoomed in by dragging it.

ADJUST the zoom using the slider on the top right.

ZOOM OUT by clicking on the zoomed-in page.

SEARCH by entering text in the search field and click on "In This Issue" or "All Issues" to search the current issue or the archive of back issues
respectively.
.

PRINT by clicking on thumbnails to select pages, and then press the
print button.

SHARE this publication and page.

ROTATE PAGE allows you to turn pages 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise.Click on the page to return to the original orientation. To zoom in on a rotated page, return the page to its original orientation, zoom in, and
then rotate it again.

CONTENTS displays a table of sections with thumbnails and descriptions.

ALL PAGES displays thumbnails of every page in the issue. Click on
a page to jump.

A54
world
Sunday Guardian www.guardian.co.tt September 29, 2013
European development groups have reported that
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change s
(IPCC s) latest scientific assessment of the phe-
nomenon matches the observations and experiences
of farming and other groups they partner in Africa,
Asia and Latin America.
The IPCC scientists, who acknowledge they often
have only sketchy rainfall and temperature data for
many areas in developing countries, say global tem-
peratures have risen, extreme weather is more frequent
and rainfall less predictable.
If emissions are not cut dramatically, they say, the
world can expect steady sea-level and temperature
rises, more extreme weather and less certain rain-
fall.
"Climate change is a reality here. We can see the
impacts everywhere. There are new insects on our
crops because of higher temperatures here. We can t
produce now without spraying the crops," said a
Bolivian farmer, Alivio Aruquipa, who lives in La
Granja, near La Paz and works with Christian Aid
partner group Agua Sustentable (Care).
"We are the ones who feel the impact of climate
change. We have suffered a lot with the lack of water.
People feel that they have to leave the country, or
leave their homes to look for work to feed their fam-
ilies. There are conflicts over water between the dif-
ferent communities, because we all need water and
there isn t enough for everyone," he said.
"The people we work with are living with the
effects of climate change right now. In Niger, farmers
are being forced to find new sources of income as
climatic changes make rearing livestock impossible.
In Peru, highland communities, who have relied
on regular water supplies from Andean glaciers for
centuries, are having to cope with shifting water
availability which is affecting their ability to grow
food to feed their families and make a living," said
Care s climate change officer, Sven Harmeling.
Nkhuleme Ntambalika, who lives in the Balaka
district in Malawi and has been helped by the Centre
for Environmental Policy and Advocacy, said rainfall
patterns had become increasingly erratic, something
they attributed to climate change.
"We used to have very stable rainfall that was ade-
quate and non-erosive. These days no one knows
when to plant crops. When rains come, they are
either too little for planting or too heavy, such that
fields get waterlogged or eroded. A prolonged dry
spell follows and scorches the germinated crops. The
seed is lost."
"The latest climate science affirms what small-
scale farmers around the world are telling us, that
seasons are changing, weather is increasingly extreme
and unpredictable, making it tougher to feed their
families," said Oxfam in a new briefing paper.
(The Guardian, UK)
In 1987, the govern-
ment of Thailand
launched a huge,
unplanned experiment.
They built a dam across
the Khlong Saeng river,
creating a 60-square-
mile reservoir.
As the Chiew Larn
reservoir rose, it drowned
the river valley, trans-
forming 150 forested hill-
tops into islands, each
with its own isolated
menagerie of wildlife.
Conservation biolo-
gists have long known
that fragmenting wilder-
ness can put species at
risk of extinction. But it s
been hard to gauge how
long it takes for those
species to disappear.
Chiew Larn has given
biologists the opportunity
to measure the speed of
mammal extinctions.
"It s a rare thing to come
by in ecological studies,"
said Luke Gibson, a biol-
ogist at the National Uni-
versity of Singapore.
Over two decades, Dr
Gibson and his colleagues
have tracked the diversity
of mammals on the
islands. In Friday s issue
of the journal Science,
they report that the
extinctions have turned
out to be distressingly
fast.
"Our results should be
a warning," said Dr Gib-
son. "This is the trend
that the world is going
in."Tropical forests are
regularly cleared for log-
ging, farming and cities.
In most cases, the only
original tree cover is
reduced to isolated
patches. Many of the
original species of plants
and animals may still
survive in those frag-
ments, but they experi-
ence new stresses. The
edges of the fragments
are no longer dim and
humid, for example.
The small size of the
surviving populations
also creates problems.
Over the course of a few
generations, a small pop-
ulation can accumulate
harmful mutations that
make them less fertile or
more vulnerable to dis-
eases. Scientists have
hypothesized that many
species will gradually
decline in forest frag-
ments until they become
extinct. Reducing a vast
carpet of jungle to iso-
lated patches thus creates
a so-called "extinction
debt" that nature will
sooner or later collect.
After the Khlong
Saeng river was
dammed,
David
Woodruff of the Univer-
sity of California at San
Diego recognised that the
islands in the reservoir
would be good places to
study how quickly nature
calls in that debt. The
islands were all formed
at the same time, they
were all isolated by water
and they were surround-
ed by a vast forest pre-
serve that was still brim-
ming with biological
diversity.
Between 1992 and
1994, Woodruff s team
visited a dozen islands,
setting a 150-yard line of
traps on each one. Each
day for a week they vis-
ited the traps, tagged any
mammals they found
and released the animals.
The researchers also set
the same traps in the
forests surrounding the
reservoir. Just five years
after the dam was built,
they could see a differ-
ence. Several species were
more rare on the islands
than on the mainland.
Dr Gibson returned to
the same 12 islands in
2012 and repeated the
survey. He started on a
25-acre island. The first
survey had found seven
species of mammals. Dr
Gibson spent a week
checking traps on the
island and found only a
single species: the
Malayan field rat.
This was a startling
find for two reasons. One
was the drastic crash in
diversity.
(New York Times)
Farmers confirm
climate change
Climate change will hit poor countries hardest, the
IPCC says. Here, drought-stricken goats drink from a
borehole in Wargadud, Kenya.
PHOTO: STEPHEN MORRISON/EPA
Mammals go extinct fast in fragmented forests